I wish they were the same burners since 2000. Unfortunately everything the=
n
was SCSI, and now I've just got whatever drives are installed in my various
computers by default.
Here are some details of my read failures (both were a single file, not the
whole disc.)
First was an obvious, though very small, scratch on the top surface of the
disc. They were kept very carefully; it's hard to imagine how that happene=
d
but it did. Some of the disc media are extremely fragile, moreso as they
age it seems.
One file could not be read, resulting in a Mac Finder Error -36 (disk IO
error). I was able to recover all but about 10 seconds of the audio by
using a utility to do a brute-force read (i.e. copy the file including the
unverifiable bits, which came back as solid digital black / silence.).
Unfortunately I don't recall the utility used! Also: these were Sound
Designer 2 files. Which means no header, but they do have a resource fork
which is where the metadata is stored.
Second failure was also a single file failing with disk IO error -36 on
attempted copy. All other files on the disc copied fine. I have not tried
to extract any audio with a utility. Also SD2 files.
I have begun to put my faith in spinning platters rather than optical media=
;
It's a shaky faith to be sure however. So far, I'm concentrating on a smal=
l
number of high capacity drives I keep in semi-regular use, so I'll notice i=
f
a failure occurs.
-jeremiah
On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 8:53 AM, Rob Danielson <> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Jeremiah--
> Interesting. What is the result with the failed reads? The bad file
> transfers and is corrupt or won't read/copy as an entity on the disc?
>
> Same burner(s) since 2000? What model(s)?
>
> Checking the redundant copies periodically and recopying them every
> few years is hard work but managable for drives, not for >1000 disks.
> Are you not re-burning your optical disks now and just going to
> drives? However at risk, I still see the disks as my best hope in
> the likelihood I'll never keep up. A 1TB failing to mount is a bad
> thought. :-) Rob
>
> =3D =3D =3D
>
>
> At 12:25 AM -0700 5/2/11, Jeremiah Moore wrote:
> >I'm now migrating some CD-R burns done in 2000 to hard disk. I've had tw=
o
> >failed reads so far, each time a single file rather than an entire disc.
> >
> >These were burned on quality stock, either TY or Mitsui (now MAM-A)
> >
> >Next will be the hard drives not spinning up I expect.
> >
> >Ultimately, your data will only survive if you maintain redundant copies=
,
> >check it periodically and recopy every few years.
> >
> >-jeremiah
> >
> >
> >On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 7:46 PM, Rob Danielson <> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> At 9:51 AM +0100 5/1/11, Chris Edwards wrote:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >On Sat, 30 Apr 2011, Rob Danielson wrote:
> >> >
> >> >| ~4 years ago I found several web sites with tests of burners with
> >> >| several criteria measured. There were significant differences betwe=
en
> >> >| burners.
> >> >
> >> >Right - and good luck buying a 4-year old burner model :-)
> >>
> >> Hi Chris--
> >>
> >> The few reviews I read yesterday suggest to me there are still
> >> significant performance differences in today's models. One can still
> >> find 4-5 year old drives for sale. Makes some sense that a drive that
> >> does not also burn double-layer and BR could be more mechanically
> >> reliable at handling vanilla DVD-R's.
> >>
> >>
> >> >
> >> >Personally I have little faith in recordable DVDs in the long-term.
> >> >Plenty disks I wrote a few years ago are no longer readable :-(
> >>
> >> This may be consistent with the poor burner/media combination
> >> observation. Quite a few burners create disks that will not
> >> consistently read on other burners. 4X and 8X burned disks more so.
> >> When I noticed this at a lab and on an early iMac and a Powerbook G4,
> >> I looked into the matter. After settling with the Pioneer
> >> DVR-107D/T-Y silver discs combination, no disks have failed to read
> >> even on other drives. I'm burning disc #3064 as I type.
> >>
> >> I'm more confident about these optical DVD-R disks than I am a boxes
> >> of IDE hard drives that hold material.
> >>
> >>
> >> >
> >> >One thing I've been told, by an ex-BBC person, is that the "rewritabl=
e"
> >> >DVD media may actually be better, because the chemistry involved is
> >> >different, and lasts longer.
> >>
> >> I think the pits can be read more reliably for a period of time but I
> >> don't think the longevity is better than gold/silver media with
> >> phthalocyanine dye.
> >>
> >>
> >> >
> >> >But as has already been said, the only way to be sure is to
> periodically
> >> >copy stuff to fresh media. Hence I now keep everything on live hard
> >> >disks.
> >>
> >> Smart, but if one has more than 3-5 drives, drive to drive
> >> duplicating is quite expensive and tedious. I'm risking letting the
> >> optical disks do that work for me for the next 20 years,..
> >>
> >>
> >> >Amongst other advantages, when the time comes, copying stuff will
> >> >simply involve a single "drag'n'drop" type operation on my computer,
> which
> >> >should be MUCH easier than copying loads of DVDs one by one...
> >>
> >> For sure! As of this month, I've started keeping the field recording
> > > originals on 1TB drives too for this reason. Rob D.
> >>
>
> --
>
>
>
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
jeremiah moore | SOUND |
http://www.jeremiahmoore.com/
|